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Accepted???. Received????; in original form???? The general observational constraints on elliptical galaxies, Sérsic model fits to the surface brightness profile as well as central velocity dispersions, are compared with the predictions from the density profiles of haloes within dissipationless ΛCDM N-body simulations, i.e. cuspy models with inner density slopes typically in the range between −1 (NFW) and −1.5 and fairly low concentrations, to ask whether these density profiles represent the total mass distribution or only the dark matter component of observed structures. Elliptical galaxies turn out to be inconsistent with cuspy low-concentration NFW models representing the total mass, nor are they consistent with the steeper −1.5 inner slope, nor with the more recent models proposed by Navarro et al. (2004) and others with shallower inner profiles, nor with NFW models ten times more concentrated than predicted in the cosmological simulations, as deduced from several X-ray observations: in all these cases, the mass models, extrapolated inwards, lead to local mass-to-light ratios that are smaller than the stellar value inside an effective radius, and to central aperture and slit velocity dispersions that are much
Mamon et al. (Wed,) studied this question.